London - Edward Rutherfurd [176]
“You lied,” Abraham remarked.
“I’m sorry.”
The old man shrugged. “I’m Jewish,” he said wryly. “I shall never forgive you.” Which, though Brother Michael did not understand it, was a bitter Jewish joke.
They were not safe yet, however. The mob behind, now doubtless looting Abraham’s house, might change its mind, and there would be other mobs about too. Thinking quickly, the monk told Abraham: “I’ll take you to my brother’s house.”
But here again he was due for a shock. Encountering Bull, who was standing by St Mary-le-Bow in the company of Pentecost Silversleeves he explained what he wanted, only to be told by the merchant, “Sorry. I don’t want my house burned down. He must go elsewhere.”
“But you know him. You got Bocton from him. He could be killed otherwise,” Brother Michael protested.
Bull was adamant. “Too risky. Sorry.” And he turned his back.
To the monk’s surprise, it was Pentecost Silversleeves who solved the problem. “We shall take him to the Tower,” he announced. “The Jews are being protected there by the constable. Come on,” and he started to lead them in that direction. When, however, Brother Michael remarked that the Exchequer clerk at least showed some humanity, Silversleeves gave him a bland look. “You don’t understand,” he remarked coolly. “I’m protecting him because the Jews are chattels of the king.”
Not all the king’s Jewish chattels were so lucky. There were numerous assaults, and the mobs also, naturally, looted the houses of these rich foreigners. Before long, as news of the London riot spread, other towns started similar atrocities, the worst of which took place in York, where a substantial congregation was burned alive. King Richard was furious and had the perpetrators severely punished, but the London riot of September 1189, the first of its kind in England, was to mark the start of a gradual erosion of the Jewish community’s position that would have tragic consequences for a hundred years.
For Brother Michael, however, the image that remained, hauntingly, in his mind from that day was not of the angry mob, nor even of Abraham.
It was of a pale, proud face, a pair of large, dark brown eyes, and a long white neck.
If Sister Mabel kept cheerful, it was partly because early that year an important new interest had been added to her own life. She had a child.
Not of her own, but as near as she could get.
Sister Mabel never did things by half. When Simon the armourer suddenly died, leaving a widow and an infant son, she not only comforted the mother, she virtually adopted the little boy. As it happened that her brother the fishmonger had young children, she arrived at his house one day with the little fellow in her arms and announced, “Here’s a playmate for our babies.” The boy’s name was Adam. With his webbed hands and his white tuft, the Barnikel family soon dubbed him ‘little duck’, or ‘ducket’, and before long Adam Ducket he became.
Mabel was delighted with the arrangement. Hardly a day went by without her finding some cause to visit Adam and his mother, and indeed, the widow was glad enough of her assistance. “For his two daughters from his first wife,” she explained to Mabel, “are both married and they aren’t interested in us. That’s for sure.”
In other ways, though, the widow was lucky. Many of London’s humbler craftsmen owned little more than the tools of their trade, but whilst the armoury itself had been taken by a new master, Simon had left his widow a tiny, four-room house by Cornhill, and through letting out two of the rooms and working hard as a sempstress, she could get by.
There was also the other inheritance. It was on this account that, thanks to Mabel, a small